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Comment by p1esk | Hacker News Reader

I did buy a new car a few months ago, and the best possible driver assist features were a priority for me. I bought Chrysler Pacifica minivan with their "advanced" driver assist package. It's just an adaptive cruise control plus warnings when I drift off out of a clearly marked lane. It does not offer a lane keeping ability.

That's a $50k 2020 model with all premium features added. I haven't tried Comma, but from what I can see it can actually drive itself in the most routine situation - staying in a lane on a freeway. My Pacifica can't do that, even though it has 8 cameras and a radar.

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This is a legitimate criticism. I can't for the life of me, figure out why manufacturers are still artificially segmenting their products with software. Some cars have had fairly capable lane tracing since the 2019 MY, and others still don't for the 2021 MY.

However, now that I have the adaptive cruise control, I get anxious that I might get into an accident when I think it's enabled while it isn't. Another concern is that it won't be able to apply braking hard enough when a collision is imminent - in such situation it flashes a red warning on the display and sounds an alarm prompting me to brake, but because I haven't been actively adjusting speed with my foot, it might increase my reaction time.

So perhaps having more of those "half way there" self driving features could lead to more of such anxiety, I'm not sure. And I don't know who I would trust more, a car manufacturer, or someone like Comma AI, with my safety. Leaning towards car manufacturers to be honest.

At least personally (as someone driving openpilot pretty regularly) I'm a lot happier to trust openpilot than the stock system in my car since openpilot watches the driver and nags you (and eventually disengages) if you don't pay attention to the road. With the stock system I have to trust myself more.

At least with manufacturers you know who to sue if something goes wrong. I'm pretty sure that Comma has set this all up to shed as much liability as possible since they make you flash the unit with the right software.

Yeah, the stock driver assists in most cars still need a LOT of work. I drove from San Diego to LA last weekend with a comma, and openpilot handled the entire trip without a single disengagement until I got off the highway. I’d be really impressed to see a stock LKA manage the same (although I’ve heard great things about super cruise!)

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